The Fearless
Author: Emma Pass
Series: -
Pages: 400
Publisher: Random
House Children’s Publishers
Release date: 24th
April 2014
Synopsis (Goodreads)
The Fearless. An army, powered by an incredible
new serum that makes each soldier stronger, sharper, faster than their enemies.
Intended as a force for good, the serum has a terrible side-effect - anyone who
takes it is stripped of all humanity, empathy, love. And as the Fearless sweep
through the country, forcing the serum on anyone in their path, society becomes
a living nightmare.
Cass remembers the night they passed through her village. Her father was Altered. Her mother died soon after. All Cass has left is her little brother - and when Jori is snatched by the Fearless and taken to their hellish lair, Cass must risk everything to get him back.
Cass remembers the night they passed through her village. Her father was Altered. Her mother died soon after. All Cass has left is her little brother - and when Jori is snatched by the Fearless and taken to their hellish lair, Cass must risk everything to get him back.
Review: 3 out of 5 stars
Our MC is Cass who
is only a young child at the beginning of the book and living a seemingly
normal life until The Fearless arrive – a powerful army of soldiers who have
been injected with a serum created by scientists trying to find a cure for PTSD
which inadvertently turned them into a strong, emotionless lethal zombie type of creatures who now run rampant and pretty much now rule forcing Cass and her family to move offshore to Hope Island in order to survive.
After the death of
her mother and father it leaves Cass to look after her brother Jordi and make a
life for them on the secluded island. When the Fearless enter the island and
kidnap her brother, there is no option but to flee with an intruder who was
being kept as a prisoner, using his knowledge to help and to save her brother,
The Fearless was a fast-paced
book and wasn’t without action, danger and death; I found the concept to be
entertaining and it was great to get the POV’s from Cass, Myo who was quite
secretive and Sol, Cass’s childhood friend but there were a number of plot
holes and the world-building I found to be lacking – I needed more information
which I’m hoping to get in the sequel but there was a lot of telling rather
than showing in this book which became tiresome.
The biggest let-down
for me was the weak characterisations; I wasn’t a fan of Cass right from the
beginning, she came across as naïve being raised on the island believing the
outside world was now being run only by silver eyed fearless; she could show
strength in one scene only to weaken in the next, I wasn’t completely sure
where her loyalties were. Sol was also an ass, supposedly in love with Cass, this
guy was rash and acted rather than thought, I did like mysterious Myo but I
thought he lacked conviction and held back too much.
I did like the bond
the book showed between siblings, this aspect was done well there was also a
mysterious element that I quite enjoyed you could tell there was something
going on with Hope island and with Myo right from the onset it was just working
out what it was, the element of surprise and the shock twists and turns kept
the story entertaining.
Thank you to Random House Children’s Publishers
and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review The Fearless.
About
the author: Emma Pass grew up at an environmental studies centre
near London, went to art school in Cornwall and now lives in the north-east
Midlands, UK. Her YA dystopian thriller ACID is out from Random House
Children's Books on 25th April 2013 (UK), Mondadori on 13th June 2013 (Spain)
and Delacorte on 1st April 2014 (US). Another standalone thriller, The
Fearless, will follow in the UK in 2014.
